xii, 424 pages : 24 cm

People Get Ready! : A New History of Gospel Music is a passionate, celebratory, and carefully researched chronology of one of America's greatest treasures. From Africa through the spirituals, from minstrel music through jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel, People Get Ready! shows the links between styles, social patterns, and artists. The emphasis is on the stories behind the songs and musicians. From the nameless slaves of Colonial America to Donnie McClurkin, Yolanda Adams, and Kirk Franklin, People Get Ready! provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of this musical genre. In addition to the more familiar stories of Thomas A. Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson, the book offers intriguing new insights into the often forgotten era between the Civil War and the rise of jubilee--that most intriguing blend of minstrel music, barbershop harmonies, and the spiritual. Also chronicled are the connections between some of gospel's precursors (Blind Willie Johnson, Arizona Dranes, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and modern gospel stars, including Andrae Crouch and Clara Ward. People Get Ready! knits together a number of narratives, and combines history, musicology and spirituality into a coherent whole, stitched together by the stories of dozens of famous and forgotten musical geniuses [Publisher description]

Includes discography (pages 325-351), bibliographical references, and index

Why gospel music? -- Gospel's African roots -- The rise of spirituals in North America -- What spirituals are, what spirituals mean -- The American Civil War -- Reconstruction, the jubilee singers, and minstrelsy -- The foundations of gospel: the Black exodus, barbershop quartets, the Pentecostals, and jack-leg preachers -- The fathers of gospel: William H. Sherwood, Charles A. Tindley, and Thomas A. Dorsey -- Chicago and the rise of gospel music -- Three divas: Rosetta Tharpe, Clara Ward, and Mahalia Jackson -- The great gospel groups: six unforgettable voices -- Gospel on the freedom highway -- Gospel's evolution: from Alex Bradford to James Cleveland to Andrae Crouch -- The last great male quartets -- Contemporary gospel: six defining voices

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